


If It Takes Forever, I Will Wait for You

by isyotm



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Off-screen Character Death, Post Finale, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 03:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isyotm/pseuds/isyotm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time marches on without Merlin as he waits for the Once and Future King to return.</p><p>Contains spoilers for the end of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If It Takes Forever, I Will Wait for You

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I Will Wait for You" by Connie Francis.

Merlin returns to Camelot alone, eyes red and dried tear tracks cutting through the dirt on his face. When he returns, he doesn’t say a word. He only shakes his head at Gwen and the knights gathering around him— _I’m sorry, I couldn’t save him—_ and his eyes well with tears again (he would think he’d have cried them all out by now) before he collapses in the middle of the courtyard outside the castle.

After he comes to, he doesn’t speak to anyone for three days. He mutely does the chores Gaius assigns him, collecting herbs and seeing to patients, but afterwards he goes straight back to his room, lies down on the bed, and cries. He tries to be quiet but he knows Gaius hears him and for some reason that makes him cry harder. _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._

The first words he speaks are at Arthur’s funeral; a quiet, staid affair. The citizens of Camelot from even the furthest villages travel to the citadel, setting up camp out of the way of busy soldiers, in order to pay their respects to their late, beloved king and to honor their equally well-loved queen. The knights of Camelot carry Arthur’s body to the edge of the lake and place it on the boat, but one familiar face is missing. Merlin looks around blankly, eyes wet, and asks in a monotone, “Where’s Gwaine?”

Gaius squeezes his arm and keeps his eyes fixed on the boat that is being pushed into the lake. The arrow is set alight and the call is given for the archer to draw.

“Gaius? Where is he?”

He still doesn’t get an answer, but he has a sick feeling he already knows what it is.

“Gaius?” His voice rises with urgency. _No, please not Gwaine._ Gwaine can’t be gone. He’s invincible, so full of life and adventure, the embodiment of strength.

“Merlin...” Gaius begins. The archer fires and Arthur’s funeral boat bursts into flame.

The tears that have been threatening all day now course freely down the young man’s face as he repeats the mantra has been going through his mind since Arthur died in his arms, feet away from salvation: _It should have been me. It’s my fault._ _I was supposed to be able to protect everyone._

He doesn’t speak again for another week. This time he doesn’t even leave his room.

* * *

 

Eventually the pain stops being so immediate and it agrees to be a part of him rather than _all_ of him. He stops forgetting that his duties no longer include waking Arthur up or dressing him or taking the king his meals or accompanying him everywhere. His world shrinks to only Gaius, medicine, and the patients who visit from all over Camelot or send the quickest messengers they can find in order to receive the physician’s skillful care.

He watches Gwen revive slowly herself after her period of mourning and take over duties as the sole ruler of Camelot. He’s surprised when she repeals the laws prohibiting sorcery, insisting it’s what Arthur would have wanted, and reinstates the post of court sorcerer. She offers it to Merlin with the same words she used to accompany her decree, although these are said softly, sadly, and with the fear he will brusquely refuse her the way he’s refused everything since he got back from Camlann.

“Please, Merlin? It’s what Arthur would’ve wanted.”

He doesn’t ask how she knows. It doesn’t really matter anymore.

The first time he appears at Gwen’s side wearing the official uniform of the court magician, the design dug up from the archives by Geoffrey and diligently recreated by the court tailors, he hears shocked murmurs and feels eyes boring into him.

“He looks familiar, doesn’t he?”

“Yes… Wait, isn’t that Arthur’s manservant?”

“He was a sorcerer all along?”

“He should be tried for treason!”

He stares straight ahead and ignores them, but he finds it much harder to ignore the confused and betrayed looks Percy and Leon keep giving him as the official announcement is made before the court and his appointment is grudgingly accepted.

_Why didn’t you tell us? Couldn’t you trust us? We’re your friends, Merlin._

He feels himself withdrawing even more into the shell of pain and loneliness Arthur’s death has created, but he doesn’t know how to make it stop. He’s not sure he wants to. 

* * *

 

He walks into the royal chambers one morning and finds Gwen crying over her breakfast. She jumps, clearly startled, and gives a wet laugh when she looks up and sees him standing in the doorway.

“Good morning, Merlin,” she says as brightly as she can and wipes her tears away with her napkin.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve knocked.”

“No, it’s fine. Come in.” She gestures for him to pull out a chair and sit next to her and smiles. It wavers around the edges but she valiantly manages to keep anymore tears from falling. “You’d think I would be used to it by now. Four years is a long time.”

“Yes” is all Merlin says in reply. It’s all he can say. He doesn’t think it’d be fair to tell Gwen he still has dreams where Arthur goes cold and limp in his arms and he begs Kilgharrah for help only to be told that nothing more can be done and Arthur is beyond saving.

She shakes her head. “But listen to me being so dreary on such a beautiful morning. How are you, Merlin? I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“You know me. Busy, busy.”

Her smile looks a little more real now. “You should rest every so often. You do remember rest, don’t you?”

He wonders if she can tell that his answering chuckle is forced.

* * *

 

Ten years after Arthur’s death, Gaius dies. Merlin moves out of the tiny chambers tucked away in the corner of the castle and into ones more suitable for someone of his position. He doesn’t really want the huge rooms Gwen has been pestering him to set up shop in, but it’s too hard to continue where he is. Gaius is everywhere, the room seems to hum with the ghost of his presence, and sometimes when he looks out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees the old man puttering around his work table, putting together some new concoction or performing a new experiment.

He looks in a mirror in his new chambers, searching for signs of the time and pain he has experienced on his face, and frowns. He doesn’t look like he’s aged a day.

* * *

 

He’s 60 years old when Gwen dies and he leaves Camelot, looking as young as he did the day he arrived. He disappears in the middle of the night, most of his clothes and other personal items still in their places as though they’ll wait for him to come back, and leaves a note on his bed that simply says “I resign.” He can’t bring himself to stay if there’s no one to stay for. The Pendragon line has ended.

As he takes one last look at the dawn sunlight glinting off the towers of the Citadel, he thinks of Nimueh. How she looked so young at their first meeting when she had already lived longer than Merlin. He wonders if that will be his fate as well. He wonders how long he’ll have to wait until Arthur returns.

* * *

 

Time becomes like a stream to him, something he can enter and swim about in or simply ignore and step past should he so choose. He enters cities or towns every so often and watches as the people and places around him change with the passing decades: The end of the Dark Ages, the rise of England as a sea power, the Renaissance, colonialism. He considers crossing the ocean and settling down in the New World but quickly decides against it. Whenever Arthur awakens to reassume his title and reclaim his throne, Merlin will be needed _here_ , not in some freshly discovered land thousands of miles away.

_I won’t leave you. Not again._

* * *

 

With the advent of modern transportation, cars and trains and the ever encroaching arm of civilization, he decides to move into the city permanently, a place called London built on lands that used to belong to Arthur and Camelot, and end his self-imposed exile.

No matter where he goes it’s dusty, dirty, and completely impersonal, but at least with people all around him he can ignore the gaping hole in his chest that still throbs as though it were a fresh wound.

He feels a part of him die, extinguished like a candle in the wind, along with Aithusa. After many sleepless nights, nights when no matter how many blankets he piles on his body he can’t stop shivering, he realizes what it is: There are no more dragons and so he is no longer a Dragon Lord. That part of him is gone.

He curls up under his blankets and wishes fervently for the days when he was a servant in Camelot. Or at least that he wasn’t so alone.

_Arthur, when will you come back to me?_

* * *

 

Merlin is so very tired.

He steps out of his home that looks over the Lake of Avalon and stares out at the water, long since leached of its magical properties by the presence of so much iron and the departure of the Sidhe. He doesn’t know why he moved here; the sight is a constant reminder of what he considers his greatest failure, the moment that has haunted him for hundreds of years. And yet something keeps him rooted to this place, his magic always drawing him back, and so he can’t find it in himself to leave, to move somewhere associated with less painful memories.

He’s on the train when he hears it. Laughter. _Arthur’s_ laughter, highly amused by someone else’s foolishness, a sound he knows well. He’s hit with a wave of nostalgia so powerful it nearly knocks him backwards and he gropes blindly towards the sound. It gets louder and louder until it sounds like it’s right in front of him. He looks up.

And there he is.

Arthur—Merlin would recognize that face anywhere, even after centuries apart—is laughing at a boy (he looks achingly similar to Lancealot) who has a confused expression on his face as he searches through his bag. Before Merlin can stop himself, he’s stumbling forward, grabbing Arthur by the wrist and turning him around. _Let me look at you,_ he begs with his eyes. _It’s been so long._ He needs to know that this moment is real, that Arthur is finally back after all these years.

There’s no recognition in the familiar blue eyes staring back at him, only some uncertainty and a slight distrust, and that guts him to the core. The man he has lived his entire life for, _his_ Arthur, doesn’t know him at all. Thinks he’s just some crazy old man on a train.

Another unforgettable voice, the deep, even tones of Kilgharrah, whispers in the back of his mind. _The time has not yet come, young warlock._ The words echo throughout his body, lending him strength, awakening the Dragon Lord inside him he thought had died so long ago.

It almost physically pains him to do so, but he manages to release his vice grip on Arthur’s wrist. He mumbles an apology and goes back to his seat on the train, ducking his head to hide the tears he thought had long since dried up, joy and pain mingled together. _Arthur._

Arthur, the Once and Future King, _his_ king, has returned to him. And maybe Arthur doesn’t remember Merlin right now, but Kilgharrah has promised their time will come, Kilgharrah who has always been able to see the past and the future, and now all he can do is wait patiently for the time when he can serve at his king’s side once more. He stumbles off the train as it approaches his stop and pauses for a moment, an unmoving figure in the bustling crowd, to find his bearings among the sea of emotions washing over him.

_You’ve come back._

_Thank you, Arthur._


End file.
